


What You Are In The Dark

by telemain



Series: Fork at the Trident [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 06:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18404729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemain/pseuds/telemain
Summary: Scenes from an alternate-history Song of Ice and Fire. Two mercenaries in the Free Cities share a tent, stories, and a drink.





	What You Are In The Dark

The scene: a tent, pitched in a field in the Disputed Lands among other tents, cookfires, watchfires, and all the gear of a mercenary band on campaign. Meant to sleep four, current occupancy two people and lots of boxes. 

On the left (as one comes through the flap) is the one called Jhon Clubfoot; broad and tall, with shoulder length brown hair and a beard starting to turn grey. He’s old for a sellsword; over thirty years old in a profession where men die young. If the phrase were known in Westeros, where he’s from, he might take ”work hard, play hard” as his personal motto, although it might also plausibly be “fight hard, drink hard, whore hard.” 

Tonight he’s working on item two, item one will come in the morning (his armor is heavy, his arms heavier, and he enjoys being right in the thick of the action), and, should he survive, item three will be as soon as they get back to a town. His drink is a quarter barrel of some cheap dark bitter ale he picked up in their last stop, and he’s drinking half a mug at a gulp, clearly looking to finish it before the night is half over. 

The other man faces him across a few crates they’re using as a table for an idle card game. He’s also from Westeros, and they get along, but aside from that, they seem to have little in common. Most call him Veck, a select few shortening that to “Vee”, and although almost as tall as Jhon, he’s slender, perhaps half Jhon’s weight, and has close-cropped black hair. He’s young, eighteen or so, but has already developed battle instincts far beyond his years. Some think he doesn’t like women, to which he would reply he just doesn’t like whores, and more than once during an extended stopover in a town he’s seduced some local girl to share his bed for the duration. 

He’s never without a long thin sword, which he handles like a Braavosi water dancer, although in the field he also carries a seven-foot-long spear, which he wields with as much aplomb, jumping, spinning, and flipping around his opponents. He’s sipping a light white wine, and maybe will get halfway down the bottle before he calls it a night. 

Jhon took another gulp and continued his story, “No shit, there I was, no weapon, no nothing, not even a dagger, and I’m backing away from him and that  _ arakh _ , and I’m just thinking about should I risk taking a hit and try and tackle him or something when I hear someone else behind me. I hear hoofbeats behind me, to be exact. So I throw myself flat and the horse goes right over me and there’s a scream and a crash and both Dothraki go down in a heap - with the horse - and I bolted on out of there and back to our lines.” 

Veck gave him a look. “The horse missed you completely? Just leapt right over a man in full armor sprawling on the ground?”

Jhon grinned, “I think I got hit on the helmet by his cock.” With a burst of laughter, he turned to refill his mug.    
  


Veck raised an eyebrow, “His? The stallion’s or the rider’s?” Jhon laughed even louder and nearly spilled his drink; Veck smirked. “The way your stories usually go, I am surprised you didn’t grab both their  _ arakhs _ , leap on the horse, cut a swath right up to their  _ Khal _ , give him a haircut with one  _ arakh _ , steal his wife with the other hand, and ride off in victory.” 

Jhon thought about that for a moment. “Right, next time I tell it, that’s what I’ll do. I mean, what I will have done. I mean...”

“You mean, that will be what you did.” 

“Right. That. V, how did someone like you end up in this whore of a life?” 

Veck half-smiled, which was about as far as he ever got up the scale. “Like me? You mean, graceful, intelligent, charming, … and devastatingly handsome?”

“I meant sarcastic, wry, quiet, arrogant… and I have to admit pretty damn smart. What made you decide to be a sellsword for all that?” 

Veck looked up at the tent’s ceiling and apparently past it into the sky full of stars. “I’m … related… to House Targaryen. They say that all you need is a drop of Valyrian blood to ride dragons. Yes, I know, the dragons have been gone for near a hundred and fifty years, but there are still eggs out there. What better way to wander the East looking for rumors of dragon eggs than with a lot of heavily-armed friends?”

“And when you find one, you think you know how to wake it up? I hear they’ve all turned to stone.” 

Veck turned the half-smile up another notch. “That’s step two.” 

Jhon laughed. “You have big plans. I never plan past tomorrow.” 

“I’ve noticed. I say you’ve got to know where you want to go if you’re going to get there.” Veck hesitated, taking a sip of wine to cover it. “What made you a sellsword?” 

“Ach.” Jhon leaned forward, scattering the remnants of the card game. “I’m from the Stormlands. So when the Lord Baratheon called the banners, I marched off to fight.” 

“You fought in Robert’s Rebellion?” 

“Aye. Robert’s Rebellion. Eddard’s Peace. I fought all through that war, Gulltown, Summerhall, the Bells, and when I heard that they’d made armistice at the Trident and we weren’t going to fight, I felt … disappointed. I wanted to fight and I didn’t care who. That was the only time I really felt alive.” He took a slug of his drink, eyes staring into the past. “I gave house and household over to my brother, and when everyone rode to Storm’s End to renew oaths of allegiance to Baratheon and Targaryen, I took ship over here. Been here ever since.” 

“You ever regret it?” 

“Here and there, long time ago. I probably could go back, but there’s nothing for me there. No wars, no fighting. I’d probably get kicked out of bars and whorehouses every night. Nahhh. Better here.” Still lost in the past, Jhon turned to refill his drink. “Know what it was, my foster father gave me some good advice. Jon, Lord Arryn I mean, Lord Jon Arryn of the Vale it was, he said to me, he said Robert, you would have been miserable being the king.” 

Veck sat up straight, tipping over his empty glass. He wasn’t drunk enough to miss that. “Wait.  _ Who _ said  _ what _ to you? And  _ what _ did he _ call you _ ?!” 

There was a long pause. 

“Fuck.” said Robert Baratheon, eloquently. 

There was another long pause. Veck broke it. “How exactly did you get from Baratheon to Clubfoot?” 

It was the last question Robert had expected, and he choked on his beer. “That’s the first question you ask?” 

“It’s the first thing I thought of. I’ve never heard of any House Clubfoot, sworn to Storm’s End.” 

“Hah. It wasn’t Clubfoot in the beginning, no. I told everyone I was Jhon the Hammerhand.” 

Veck winced. He’d seen what had happened when men tried to give themselves impressive warnames. In his experience, warnames just happened, and trying to self-apply them just backfired. 

(He was somewhat afraid that he would do something spectacularly clumsy, survive, and start getting called “Wreck”.)

Robert continued. “About six months after I joined up, we were in some little shitpit place to fight a little shitpit of a battle. Maybe a thousand total on both sides. We marched all night through a fetid mess of a swamp, mud and bugs everywhere, and I got rotten stinking drunk the night before.” 

Robert looked at his empty mug. “Couldn’t handle it as well back then. We rode out in the morning, and I was puking all over the place. Back then, I did this thing every time we fought, right before all the fighting started, I’d stand up in the saddle, raise my warhammer in one hand and let out this battlecry that I told myself they’d hear all the way back in Westeros, at Storm’s End, Dragonstone, King’s Landing. So they wouldn’t forget me.” 

He went for the barrel again and drained the last of it into his mug. “That day when I did it, the damn hammer slipped out of my hand and fell right on my horse’s leg. I had to walk into battle and ate horsemeat for a week. And someone yelled from the back ranks, ‘Hammerhand? More like Clubfoot!’ And the warname stuck.” 

Veck took another good look at the man he’d called Jhon for so long. “You know, people all over Westeros still wonder what happened to you. Some think you took the black, or are in hiding at Storm’s End or the Vale. And here you are, the grizzled old man of a mercenary company.” Veck thought about his next question. “You still stiff at House Targaryen?” 

“Nah, it was a long time ago. After I found out afterward that Lyanna went off willingly, it - “ Robert made a dismissive motion with his hands. “Mind you, I’m none too happy with House Stark, between Queen Lyanna and Eddard the Peacemaker, but we were all young and dumb.” He gave Veck a searching look. “Why? No, let me guess. You’re really His Grace the First of His Name Rhaegar of House Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, First of His Name, Lord of This, Protector of That, with a short haircut and a bad dye job.” 

“You’re actually not too far off. I’m the King’s brother. Prince Viserys, pleased to meet you.” A pause. “With a short haircut and a rather good dye job.”

“What the seven hells is a royal prince doing over here?”

“Told you. Dragon eggs. I thought if we got our dragons back, we’d be so strong no one would rebel against us again.” Viserys looked at his glass and then drank directly from the bottle. “I want to … to  _ do _ something. My brother’s the King, the one who walked alone into the enemy camp and made peace; my sister is smart enough to be a maester if the Citadel allowed women, and Rhae could make them accept her; my niece and nephews are the darlings of the realm.” Another gulp. “What am I, except the potentially-mad second son of the Mad King? The spare to the heir, except now that Rhaegar has children, they’re the heir and the spares.” He finished off the bottle. “You know, they tried to marry me off to Cersei Lannister? Cersei. Lannister. She’s ten years older than me, and she scares me. They introduced us and all she talked about was the proper uses of power, what she would do if she were Queen someday. I’m glad her brother Ser Jaime is the heir to the Rock. He seems … sane.” 

There was a short silence. Robert busied himself with packing up the card game. “V, if you ever do find those dragon eggs. I’ve got Targaryen blood too, through my grandmother, her father was Aegon the fifth. Let me know if you hatch dragons, yeah?” 

Viserys grinned, the first time Robert had ever seen that, “Sure damn thing, Jhon. We’ll come back across the Narrow Sea on our dragons and scare seven hells outta them.” He paused. “So long as you don’t set fire to my brother or anything like that.”

“Hah, I promise I won’t. But right now I’m going to go find more beer.” Robert belched, turning towards the tent flap. “Actually, first I’m going to make room. You coming?” 

“Nah. I think I’ve had enough for one night.” Viserys picked up the empty bottle and turned it in his hands. “Hey, Jhon… If I wake up tomorrow and everyone’s calling me Your Grace, or something else stupid…” 

Robert laughed, “Don’t worry. No one’s going to hear from me. Promise you that too.” 

“You know I won’t talk either. Enjoy.” Viserys watched as his friend left, his hands tightening on the bottle. “Oh, I know about promises. Lyanna broke her father’s promise, and threw the realm into war.” 

Somewhere deep in his heart, Viserys paced in front of iron bars. On the other side of the iron cage there was a dragon. It slept, for now. But sometimes something woke the dragon. And it roared and stomped and blew fire. And then he gripped the door and held it shut with all his might. 

Viserys knew his father’s madness boiled inside him. Viserys feared the day the dragon broke the cage and escaped. 

And sometimes Viserys wondered which side of the bars he was on. 


End file.
